Users tear a strip off ERP
Over-hyped, over-expensive, under-used.
By Maxwell Cooter | Techworld | Published: 05:50, 19 October 2007
ERP products are too cumbersome to employ to their full extent and too inflexible for modern business needs.
That’s according to a new survey from PMP Research which found that 82 percent of users needed their ERP software to be more responsive and that only three percent of customers used their ERP products to the full. Alarmingly, nearly a third of respondents say that a large element of their ERP software is not used at all.
The survey, which was sponsored by the Evaluation Centre, found that the main problem for users is the length of time to complete an ERP implementation – nearly half (48 percent) say that this exceeded their expectations – although 12 percent of respondents actually found implementation to be shorter than expected.
The historic perception that ERP products are difficult to implement seems to be standing up well; 48 percent of the respondents surveyed thought that it was difficult to implement.
Despite all the concerns, users are surprisingly attached to the idea of ERP: 25 percent of respondents are looking to buy new ERP packages and 46 percent are planning enhancements to existing implementations. Of course, it could also be that having spent so much money coming this far, organisations are loath to chuck away that investment.
